A new study from a transportation advocacy organization says that growing numbers of Baby Boomers will find themselves marooned in autocentric communities as they get older.
By 2015, the study states, 15 million Boomers ages 65 to 79 will live in areas with poor or no access to public transportation. Because most of these communities are designed around cars and little else, residents will find themselves unable to get around as their driving skills deteriorate - or, as the study's title puts it, "Aging in Place, Stuck without Options."
The study examined the percentage of seniors 65 to 79 who will have little to no access to public transportation in the nation's metropolitan areas in 2015 and ranked those facing the biggest mobility crisis. Among the nation's largest metro areas, those with 3 million or more residents, Atlanta faces the biggest challenge, as 90% of its seniors will have poor transit access in 2015. Kansas City topped the list of medium-sized metropolises with 1 to 3 million residents; 88% of seniors there will have poor transit access in 2015. And 100% of seniors in Hamilton-Middletown, Ohio, will have poor transit access in 2015, putting that city at the top of the list of smaller metros with populations between 250,000 and 1 million.
By comparison, only 41% of seniors in the New York City metro area will have poor transit access in 2015. The study placed the nation's largest metropolis, home to two of every three transit riders and the highest level of transit access in the country, in a category all by itself.
The mobility crisis described in the study is largely a suburban and exurban issue. In just about all the metropolitan areas assessed in the study, very low percentages of urban seniors, less than 10% in every case, will have poor transit access in 2015. Even in cities like Chicago with good metropolitan transit systems, very high ratios of suburban seniors - nearly two thirds, in Chicago's case - will have poor transit access by then.
This makes the crisis a problem of the Boomers' own making, in a sense. “The baby boom generation grew up and reared their own children in communities that, for the first time in human history, were built on the assumption that everyone would be able to drive an automobile,” said John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and co-chair of Transportation for America, the group that commissioned the study. “What happens when people in this largest generation ever, with the longest predicted lifespan ever, outlive their ability to drive for everything? That’s one of the questions we set out to answer in this report.”
Lack of access to alternatives to driving has serious repercussions for older adults. Transportation for America cited research that shows that seniors 65 and older without affordable travel options make 15% fewer trips to the doctor, 59% fewer trips to shop or eat out and 65% fewer trips to visit family and friends than drivers of the same age. For many in that group of non-drivers, driving is not an option for reasons having little to do with cost, as physical impairment leaves them unable to perform tasks like driving that they once performed with no trouble.
The issue of mobility will gain salience as Boomers age because the overwhelming majority of them will not move to retirement communities but rather "age in place," staying in or close to the homes in which they spent the bulk of their lives.
Transportation for America recommended both policy and urban design changes to address the problem. Measures like funding support for transit, vanpools and ridesharing, and design changes that promote "complete streets" that accommodate pedestrians, bicycles and motor vehicles, would go a long way towards addressing the need, the group stated.
Transportation for America is a coalition of real estate, transportation, planning, environmental, public health, civic and advocacy organizations that have come together to call for a major rethinking of national transportation policy for the 21st century. The analysis was conducted for the group by the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Coalition partner AARP provided major funding support for the study.
Image source of an elderly person at home: Wikipedia
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